Manuela Campanelli is a Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences, and a Program Faculty in Astrophysical Sciences and Technology in the School of Physics and Astronomy. She is also the founding Director of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, and has lead numerous research projects that produced numerous significant publications (see INSPIRE DataBase).

With Lousto, Zlochower, and others, Campanelli lead research that produced a number of breakthrough papers including the first calculations of merging black holes with arbitrary masses and spins in full general relativity, the discovery of large gravitational-radiation recoils, the study of spin dynamics effects, such as spin-flips, precession and hang-up orbits and key techniques to deal with extreme mass-ratio binaries. This work was recognized in 2009 with a Fellowship of the American Physical Society "for groundbreaking work on numerical simulations of binary black hole space times and for explorations of physical effects such as “super kicks” and spin-driven orbital dynamics". Some of this work was featured in Letters to Nature, APS focus, The New Scientist, Astronomy as cover stories, and were shown in the History Channel.

Campanelli is a recipient of the RIT's Trustee's Scholarship Award (2013-2014). She holds an MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Perugia (1991), and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Bern (1996). She was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany (1998-2001). She is a member of the Ligo Scientific Collaboration since 2001, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2009. Campanelli also served as Chair of the Topical Group in Gravitation of the APS in 2012-2013, and continue to serve regularly in many review panels, and journal editorial boards.